Travels with a Typewriter: A Reporter at Large

by Michael Frayn

Features some of the places in the world that interested the author. From a kibbutz in Israel to summer rains in Japan, bicycles in Cambridge to Notting Hill at the end of the 1950s, this title presents the glimpses of a world which sometimes seems familar, sometimes vanished forever.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Essays

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Michael Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy. His novels, such as Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong and Spies, have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. His works often raise philosophical questions in a humorous context. Frayn's wife is Claire Tomalin, the biographer and literary journalist.

Reviews

[Gramarye · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of Frayn's journalistic travel writings from the 1950s through the 1970s. His thoughtful, incisive observations help to immerse the reader in his travels, whether he is visiting a kibbutz in Israel shortly after the Seven Days' War, trying to figure out the elaborate cultural dance of changing shoes in Japanese houses (and trying to avoid smacking his head on their low ceilings), or pondering the contradictions of living in West and East Berlin. Nice light reading from an award-winning writer, playwright, and translator.

[Janet Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Didn't find it boring at all. He goes all over and writes about it, what's not to like? :)

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of mostly boring so called travel pieces by the novelist Frayn. Most of them are incredibly dull, going on about politics and the like, which is fine, but not what I call a travel essay. I want to find out interesting things about the places he's been...doesn't happen here. I gather his novels are better?

[Cynthia Sinsap · Rating 1 out of 5]

Aug 13

A slow start-- the pieces are more political in nature than I like to read about and because the articles are from the 1960s-80s, there are not pertinent to me today.


Aug 16






I gave up by the end of the month. the book depends too much on memory of events long past

[Alan Fricker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixed bag but the good ones make it worth while. Very interested in the festival of britain stuff

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is why I read travel essays. The perspective from the 60s and 70s provides a nice touch of history too.

[Sadhvi Kaul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not criticising the writer just that at this point in time, some pieces feel quite dated.